


miles from where you are.

by pocketsizedtitan



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 09:11:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4619766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocketsizedtitan/pseuds/pocketsizedtitan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Those that survived the plague do what they can to salvage what’s left of their ghoul-infested world. And for 462 days, Mutsuki goes on. Alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	miles from where you are.

**Author's Note:**

> written for a prompt and originally posted on my [tumblr](http://tangyo.co.vu/post/127196098640/miles-from-where-you-are).

[ **soundtrack:** _[set the fire to the third bar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfa9yxCpWoA) _ \- snow patrol]

Mutsuki counts the days in his head. Today is day number 462. He kills a ghoul - 10mm caliber through the frontal lobe - and it drops dead. Or dead _er_.

He shoves the pistol back into the holster strapped around his thigh; high enough that his fingers are constantly brushing the handle. Always a reassurance. Always in position to grab at a heartbeat’s notice. 

On this 462nd day, it’s hot and muggy. His tank top used to be white, but now it looks as if it’s been stained with coffee (but it’s dirt and blood, some his, the rest… who knows).

Coffee. He can’t remember what that tastes like.

But in this day and age, 462 days after the Apocalypse came and turned their world upside down, no one needs coffee to stay awake. Ghouls keep you up plenty.

The Apocalypse. A disease infested the world, spread airborne, affected a majority of the world’s population. No one really understood the biology of it, or why some people were completely overcome with this disease, or why others, like Mutsuki, had a “mild” case of the infection, or why some others weren’t affected at all.

The “severe” cases… well, they changed and ate people. The “mild” cases didn’t have those urges but there were some changes. 

Mutsuki rubbed over his eye patch, already knowing the whiteness in his eye is overcome with black, his pupil red. 

He tries not to think about it anymore. He tries not to think about his black and red eye, or the chaos some unknown plague brought, or the 462 days that’s gone by. It’s the same story you only hear about in books and movies, about zombies and humans struggling for survival. 

The only difference is that it’s  _not_ a story for him.

The only difference is that, 462 days ago, Mutsuki, like everyone, lost everything. Home. Family. His life.

_“I’ll see you soon (Mutsuki).”_

* * *

Urie doesn’t count the days. They’re all the same to him.

He wakes up in a sweat. Most nights he doesn’t sleep. It’s not safe to sleep at night when Ghouls are most active.They know it’s when humans let their guards down. But it’s not safe to wander out at night when human’s eyesight is worse.

So he sleeps when he can. Sort of. Insomnia’s his new best friend.

He kills Ghouls. Wipes the blood from his katana. Maybe once he’d have thought swords to be nothing more than display items. But since day one of this hell, its found its use again.

Better than worrying about ammo. It’s silent. Keeps from attracting too much attention.

He goes west. He’s not really sure why. Probably because that’s the direction he’d last seen –.

_“Urie –”  
_

_“Go. (I’ll catch up.)”  
_

_“Please, Urie.”_

Those pleading, worried eyes are for his dreams.

They’re not for the daylight, they’re not for killing Ghouls.

But they fuel his anger, just as they’ve done the endless days before. The memory of brows furrowing, green hair caught in the wind, lips moving around the words that play over and over and over –  _“Let’s go together, Urie,_ please”  _-_ and as he hears the thunk of a severed head falling to dirt, he wonders why he hadn’t just gone.

Wonders what was so important about joining the CCG to help eradicate the Ghouls. Wonders what was so important about letting Mutsuki go alone to the safe haven. 

 _“You’ll be safe there,”_  Urie had insisted.

Nowhere is safe. No one is safe.

Not the CCG headquarters after it was overrun with Ghouls. 

Not the safe haven.

Not Mutsuki.

Urie is glad he found a herd of Ghouls. His blood thrums for the kill. His blade sings for it. 

_“Urie, I love–”_

* * *

“I’m going to join the CCG,” Urie had said in that split moment of chaos. Women and children had been clambering on to trucks that would take them to the safe haven. Not far off, recruiters for the CCG had been on loud speakers asking for volunteers to help save their world and eradicate the Ghouls.

Mutsuki had shook his head. “What can we do? Let’s just go to the safe haven.”

But he had seen it in Urie’s eyes - can still remember it - the cold determination. “You go.”

Mutsuki had grabbed his arm. “Let’s go together, Urie,  _please_.”

But Urie had removed his hand from him, his grip had been firm, his expression unmoved. “…You’ll be safe there.”

“Urie.”

“Go. (I’ll catch up.)”

“Please, Urie.”

“I’ll see you soon (Mutsuki).”

Urie had shoved him then, towards one of the national guards getting civilians onto the trucks. He’d said something, something like -  _get him out of here_ \- and all Mutsuki could remember is being taken away, yelling something at Urie, but now all he remembers is not holding on to Urie.

Why hadn’t he held on?

Mutsuki cleans his pistol beneath the shade of a tree. He inserts new ammo. He’ll have to raid stores soon to find more, if none of them had been completely ransacked by now. Which is most likely the case.

It gets harder with every day that goes by.

* * *

Urie swears.

Alright, so maybe he’d gotten a little cocky back there and now he’s bleeding profusely from his side. One of those bastards had gotten their teeth on him, but thankfully, even those mildly infected by this Ghoul disease were never further infected even upon contact with the severe ones.

The only bad part - Urie is still bleeding out.

He forces his way into an abandoned drug store. Most of the shelves are empty, drugs and pain killers gone, but he doesn’t care for those. 

He swears and swears and tears through as his vision blurs.

_“How did you manage to get hurt again?”_

He hears Mutsuki’s exasperated tone, sees the tenderness in his smile, he can’t see the shelf he collides into, unhinging it in his fall. 

_“There’s a reason there’s such strict safety codes for construction workers.”  
_

_“And there’s a reason I have a nurse for a boyfriend.”_

He hears Mutsuki laugh. It’s sweet and warm. It fills him with warmth, or maybe that’s just his blood he feels.

It’s hard to differentiate between the flashes of memories and the blurriness of reality, but Urie manages to sift through all of it and find what he’s looking for: a needle and thread.

_“Okay, I’m done stitching you up.”_

He remembers the lingering kiss Mutsuki had left near the stitches, where an iron bar had fallen down, not quite on Urie, but scraping close enough that it opened up a six-inch gash over his shoulder blade. 

He remembers the annoyed look Mutsuki had upon walking into the ER to see Urie sitting on one of the beds (” _Really, Urie_?”)

He thinks he’s finished stitching himself up as he slips into the past.

* * *

Mutsuki wears a binder to flatten his breasts.

The human males he’s come across are desperate animals. If they knew Mutsuki has the body of a femal– He grimly remembers the body of a woman he once came across. Beaten. Assaulted. Murdered.

He never forgets what men are capable of.

He never wants to be like those men.

His finger tips brush the handle of his pistol as he walks through an abandoned town. 

Although who is he kidding? The whole world is abandoned.

He feels someone watching him. He’s always had an uncanny ability to know when someone is looking at him. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on edge. His body tenses. His senses are alert and wary.

He knows they belong to a man; can feel the caution in the wind, the way that gaze hungers.

Some men don’t care if you’re a woman or not… .

They belong to a Ghoul, Mutsuki realizes, because the Ghoul blocks his path up ahead. Its eyes are charged with something… sexual.

Are Ghouls capable of having those  _desires_ , he wonders.

But Mutsuki stops thinking and grabs his pistol, but the Ghoul is faster. He’s on Mutsuki before he can so much as get his finger around the trigger.

“You smell of a  _woman_ ,” the Ghoul croons, fingers digging roughly into Mutsuki’s shoulders, his gun having flown off from the bodily collision.

_“You smell so good,” Urie groaned, low and heated._

_Mutsuki’s toes curled in response, his chest flattening against Urie’s, wanting to be closer, so much clos–_.

Mutsuki reels back, but there’s no where he can go, not when he’s pinned to the ground.

There’s a ripping noise. His shirt hangs open.

The Ghoul laughs, a triumphant sound. “Oh how lovely you are.”

_“(So beautiful.)”_

_Urie’s words had a way of leaving every inch of Mutsuki blushing red. They made him shy, made him happy, made him want to hide his face, made him want to float into the clouds._

“And all mine.”

_“(Mine.)”  
_

_Mutsuki agreed. Urie was his. They were each other’s. And as Urie slid his cock into him, filled him up, burned him, they were one._

Maybe once upon a time, Mutsuki would have flinched at the salivating Ghoul. But after 462 days, he no longer feels fear.

He holds the Ghoul’s gaze.

“No, not yours.”

* * *

Urie aches.

It has less to do with the pain in his side upon waking, and more to do with the fading memory from his dream.

But he picks himself up, grabs a bottle of alcohol, leaves the drug store, and stumbles on. 

* * *

Mutsuki discards his torn up shirt, picks up his fallen pistol, and walks over the dead Ghoul’s body.

There’s a clothing shop nearby that he takes a shirt from.

The sun is starting to set. He thinks he should find a house to squat in.

The town is silent again, with exception to an unhinged door creaking.

He wonders how many towns he’s been through that were like this. Quiet and empty. How many cities he’s seen. How many people he’s met and left. He pictures a map, knowing he’s going east, because… because that’s where he last was with Urie.

He wonders why he bothers. Urie’s dead along with the CCG.

But it’s all he’s got to do; the only thing that keeps him –

* * *

–walking. 

Urie knows he’s not going to die. He uses the alcohol to keep his wound clean. It burns.

For now he avoids trouble.

For now he –

* * *

–looks at the blue sky. It’s pretty and wrong and –

* * *

–food–

* * *

–rounds a corner–

* * *

–and they stop. They think their hearts stop, too, because they’re seeing a ghost and it can’t be real.

Maybe they are ghosts because they both look close to death after 462 days.

“Urie…?”

Are ghosts capable of talking? Are their voices capable of breaking like that? 

Urie’s throat hurts. It’s so damn dry. But he knows what he’s seeing isn’t a ghost, because corporeal forms don’t smell. They don’t smell the way you remember your lover to smell; a subtle hint of flowers and mint. They don’t touch your face with shaking hands. They don’t look at you like they can’t believe what they’re seeing. They don’t look so hopeful and aching at the same time. 

“…ye..ah,” he rasps out.

“I thought you were dead,” Mutsuki whispers with a tremble in his voice.

Ghosts don’t feel so solid. They don’t bring you to your knees with relief.

“Damn it,” Urie clutches Mutsuki’s shirt, tugs him closer, smells him, holds him. 

Those endless days. Those empty nights. Miles of aimless wandering.

Months and months of nothing, of sometimes conversations with other humans, conversations by yourself, no one to hear you, no one to talk to – They find they can’t really talk anymore

Maybe later, when Urie can get off of his knees, when he can let go, when Mutsuki can stop running his fingers through dirty hair, when they can stop feeling like the other’s going to disappear.

Maybe later they can talk and figure out how they’ll survive the rest of this hell, but nothing else matters in that moment.

“…took you long enough to catch up,” Mutsuki murmurs.

Urie makes an uncharacteristic noise - a laugh or sob, something in-between - that’s muffled into Mutsuki’s stomach.

And it’s only when he lifts his head up, sees Mutsuki’s smile hasn’t changed, sees the tears in those eyes, that he realizes he’s been praying for a long time.


End file.
